NPR is thoroughly clueless about Israel's released hostages, saying their families - most of whom are still in mourning or praying for other family members - have been made "whole" again.

NPR's Ailsa Chang spoke with Liz Cathcart, executive director of the non-profit Hostage U.S., about "what life can be like for hostages once they’re free."

Clueless doesn't begin to describe this interview.

I'm sure that Cathcart is an earnest person who deals with Americans who are held hostage abroad for various reasons. But she clearly doesn't know anything about what the Israeli hostages went through.   

She says things like "The best story of hope that we can give is that the vast majority of cases that we deal with and with a family who is whole again, who recognizes that they went through an incredibly traumatic experience and they are built stronger and have learned coping mechanisms that they can apply to many different scenarios in their lives."

The hostage families are not whole again. Most of them have family members who were murdered. Some of them  witnessed the murder or rape of their loved ones or friends. Certainly all of them lost friends and neighbors. Many have husbands or fathers still in captivity.  They are not living in their own homes and won't be for months, and many homes were destroyed. The trauma is not just for the hostages themselves but for the other surviving members of their families, and for their entire communities who have lost so many.

Chang and Cathcart use a tone of voice indicating how much they care, but they couldn't be bothered to do even a modicum of research. They don't care. They just thought this would be a good segment, and pretending to care is what they need to do for their audience. 

The entire segment is an advertisement for Hostage US. The "advice" given is utterly useless in helping any Israeli hostage who was released, and it is tone deaf about what they went through. It trivializes the real trauma that they are continuing to go through and instead it recommends vacuous kumbaya cheerleading.

(h/t Irene)

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